Unstable elements

There are positions in life that are naturally unstable; they will have to go one way or the other because they can’t remain the way they are for long.

Nitroglycerine, in the natural world, is an extremely explosive liquid because it is highly unstable and the slightest jolt will make it detonate. The oxygen, nitrogen, and carbon atoms that compose the molecule are arranged in an uneasy relationship and will tend, with very little provocation, to reconfigure into new, stable bonds—but not before making a big bang.

It is the same in the Christian world. The sadly commonplace catastrophes that suddenly manifest from time to time—the flaming dissolution of a denomination, the apostasy of a leader, the revelation of a famous pastor’s marital infidelity—are certainly preceded by an unsustainable compound of unstable elements that finally come apart. History is littered with examples:

In the early 1600s preacher John Cotton emphasized grace more than most preachers in Boston. That’s not bad. But then an admiring woman in his congregation, Anne Hutchinson, started meetings in her house to discuss his sermons, and the mother of 15 leaned even further to the side of grace, to the point of neglecting sanctification and the importance of obedience. She ended up on charges of antinomianism, the teaching that we can ignore God’s law.

Like sand mixing with iron, an edifice that blends elements of Bible truth with worldliness will not adhere but come apart.

In 1662 a new phenomenon called the “halfway covenant” arose in New England. It came about because the preaching so emphasized sensational conversion experiences that people in the pews were afraid to come forward to be baptized unless they had had one. Folks grew old without receiving the rite or even calling themselves Christians, preferring the safer title “Seeker.” Alarmed pastors decided to confer partial church membership on the children of “Seekers” or non-professing Christians, calling it a halfway covenant.

Harvard was founded in 1636 to train pastors. Look at it today. This did not happen overnight and it did not happen automatically. Pure and unadulterated religion devolved first into eloquent pious lip service and finally into the rejection of God outright, but it occurred because the Word of God was not vigorously defended in a thousand little contests with the Enlightenment, as men becoming ashamed of the gospel preferred the praise of men and intellectual respectability.

What is the common denominator of these unrelated catastrophes? Heresies never spring up full-blown. There are intermediate stages where everything still seems OK, where evolving belief still looks reasonably orthodox. But something is lost and is not noticed. I asked my former history professor, Dr. D. Clair Davis, how these slippages occur. He replied that they happen whenever there is “any [teaching] that leaves something important out or seriously neglected.”

What are the teachings of Scripture being left out in our day? A Christian college hires a “celibate lesbian” as spiritual caregiver for students and thinks it will be fine. But where has Scripture ever talked about a celibate lesbian? No such creature. Victorious ex-lesbians it knows, and people under demonic delusion and bondage it knows, but where is the chapter and verse for the new hybrid of Christian homosexuals? The young woman ended up resigning a semester in, admitting that she was supportive of gays after all (see “Human Race,” Aug. 8). Nitroglycerin explodes; it is its nature.

A firebrand preacher goes off to San Francisco to save Sodom for Christ and ends up falling in line behind it. What was “left out” (Dr. Davis’ maxim) along the way, that such an unspeakable thing should happen? How did sermons that started out preaching God’s Word end up light on Bible and heavy on Bartlett’s Famous Quotations? Who can carry fire in his lap and not be burned (Proverbs 6:27)?

The signposts all say suffering lies ahead. The Apostle Paul made a career of circuit preaching, seeing to it that new converts were well-rooted and established in the faith (Romans 1:11; Ephesians 3:17; Colossians 2:7). God warns, “If you are not firm in faith, you will not be firm at all” (Isaiah 7:9). Like sand mixing with iron, an edifice that blends elements of Bible truth with worldliness will not adhere but come apart. As in the church so in the heart. “How can a young man keep his way pure? By guarding it according to your word” (Psalm 119:9).

Email aseupeterson@wng.org